ReDawn (Skyward, #2.2)(4)

I’m sorry, Alanik, Quilan said. But your attendance is required.

“He’s not asking,” I said. “He wants us to believe we don’t have a choice.” Though of course we did. As long as we could escape from them, we would always have a choice. To believe otherwise was to hand over our own power, the way they wanted to hand ReDawn over to the Superiority.

“Soon we may not,” Rinakin said. “The Council voted to consolidate the military. Many of the Independence bases are already submitting to the Council’s control.”

I stared at him. ReDawn had maintained two air forces since the end of the last war. We competed and drilled against each other, with the understanding that if ReDawn faced a common threat we would work together to fight it. The division kept us sharp, each side trying to maintain an edge against the other.

    “They’re getting ready to move against us,” I said.

“Yes,” Rinakin said. “And they’re doing it in the name of peace.”

There hadn’t been real fighting on ReDawn in almost a century, and both Unity and the Superiority promised peace and cooperation. Never mind that the Superiority had kept us contained here all this time, punishing us for rebellion. Never mind that if we accepted their peace, we also had to accept their control over every aspect of our technology, our travel, our behavior, our culture. They’d already made us paupers, withholding advanced technology from us because we rejected their rule. Now they would make us beggars as well, stripping us of our dignity and our heritage in the process.

And so many of my people accepted it. A prisoner could be convinced that they lived in a paradise, if the prison was pretty enough.

“Is there anyone left who will fight with us?”

“The base on Hollow refused to unify,” Rinakin said. “I sent my daughter and her family there. But I’m afraid they won’t be able to hold out long.”

My brother Gilaf was stationed at Hollow. He and his flightmates helped supervise the lumber work there. Unlike the rest of my family, Gilaf wasn’t going to swallow Unity lies.

“If the other Independence bases see that there are holdouts, maybe they’ll reverse course,” I said.

    “That is my hope, but I expect Unity will mobilize their forces quickly to bring them in line.”

It was hard to imagine my people firing on each other, but Unity always seemed more willing to strike out at us than at the Superiority.

“How can they do that and claim it’s for peace?” I asked.

Rinakin didn’t answer that question. I already knew the answer anyway.

It was easier to believe the story they were told than to awaken to the reality of our oppression.

“What we need,” Rinakin said, “are some allies who have not forgotten that we are at war.”

I tapped my sharp nails on the dashboard of the ship. “I know,” I said. When Rinakin originally suggested that I answer the call to join the Superiority military, I’d been excited. Finally, something I could do. All anyone on ReDawn ever seemed to want to do was talk. Even though I hadn’t made it to the tryouts, discovering that our old human allies were still alive and fighting should have been a victory.

But then those former allies kept me unconscious for weeks, woke me only when they needed something, and then treated me like a prisoner.

Still, I remembered the desperation of the woman who spoke to me first. They want my people dead. We need your help. She at least seemed to understand the gravity of the situation.

And the other one—Jorgen, the male cytonic. He was clearly untrained, to the point that he didn’t know how to communicate properly. But I did get a bit of emotion from him through his cytonic resonance, enough to know he wasn’t happy with the direction things were going.

    He was scared.

But at least the humans knew what it was like to fight back.

“The humans are facing the same problem we are,” I said. “Their leaders are looking for a way to end the war. If we appeal to them for help, they could side with Unity.”

“I don’t think that will happen,” Rinakin said. “The Council has received a directive from the Superiority. There’s someone new in charge apparently, and they’re demanding we turn over the humans we’re harboring.”

I stared at Rinakin. “We’re not harboring humans, are we?”

“No,” Rinakin said. “But a human took your place and infiltrated the Superiority. How are the Superiority to assume that happened?”

By the branches. “They think I was working with the humans.”

“They think we are working with the humans,” Rinakin said. “And now they’ve issued an ultimatum. Turn over the fugitives—”

“Or they will very politely destroy us,” I said. “Which isn’t aggressive at all, I’m sure.”

“They’ll justify it,” Rinakin said.

They justified everything. And more than half of my people would parrot the justification as if it made sense, simply because the Superiority said it.

“You think I should return to the humans and ask for help.” In hindsight I should have stayed longer, tried harder to discern their true intentions. But I’d been disoriented, alarmed at how long I’d been unconscious, how much I might have missed.